Video Games without all the boring bits

10 PEOPLE WHO JUST REALLY LIKE CHOCOLATE, AS FAR AS WE KNOW

30/11/2015

"Christmas is coming/And the goose is getting fat/Force-feed him with chocolate/So that we may harvest his liver".

That song is correct: it is indeed almost time to crack open those advent calendars, and have a small piece of cheap chocolate for breakfast for the next 24 days!

To mark the beginning of the festive season, here are ten people who we have no reason to believe have done anything other than simply gorge on lots of what is probably chocolate...

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THE ONLINE CUL-DE-SAC by Mr Biffo

30/11/2015

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I live in a cul-de-sac. No, that's not a metaphor; I live in a cul-de-sac in the most literal sense anybody can live in a cul-de-sac.

And it's not one of these rural cul-de-sacs, in the middle of nowhere, with a horse wandering around, but a cul-de-sac in a busy London borough.

And not even one of the quiet bits of the borough, but one that's off a pretty happening main road; if I went outside, I'd probably be hit by a bus, and hear people complaining about the traffic and being stabbed.

Consequently, you'd think I'd have no issue whatsoever with my Internet connection, but you'd be horribly wrong in that assumption. My Internet is terrible. And because my Internet is terrible, I'm finding it a wretched chore getting online to play games. Or download games. Or upload videos to our YouTube channel (I've been trying to get a new video up for a week now). AND IT IS TOTES RUINING MY LIFE!!!!!!!

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THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: SEGA MASTER SYSTEM - PART ONE by Mr Biffo

29/11/2015

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I couldn't escape school fast enough.

From my perspective, study leave was an excuse to stay home, play computer games, and draw comic strips. By that point I was all but done with education. The 12 years I'd been at school were quite enough, and most of those years had been an ordeal.

The only downside to eschewing revision in favour of bringing my summer holiday forward by two months is that I had nobody to hang out with. Inexplicably, all of my mates seemed to use their study leave to do studying.

Still, having done zero revision, I somehow left school with four more O Levels than I deserved - for a grand total of four O Levels.

These were English Literature (I wrote a book report on Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon, a choose-your-own adventure, because I figured it meant I wouldn't have to read a whole book), Sociology (somehow winging it enough to get a B), Art (I realised I could rush through the final exam if I did my piece in pastels rather than paint), and Graphical Communication, whatever that is. My final piece for Graph' Comm' (not my abbreviation) saw me designing packaging for a cheese-flavoured fizzy soft drink that I called 'Cheese Drink'.

I'm still waiting on the call from PepsiCo.

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WEEKEND ROUND-UP: Presented by Sir John Betjeman

27/11/2015

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Hello, boys and girls. I'm Sir John Betjeman, and I'd like to welcome you to Digitiser 2000. "Betje" didn't see that coming!!! ROFLMAO.

Here's another Digitiser2000 round-up, listing everything you might've missed from recent weeks. As one of Britain's most beloved Poet Laureates, I'd have gladly written this round-up in the form of a poem. Regrettably, however, I died in 1984. FML.

FEATURES & OPINION
VIDEO GAMES: A REFLECTION OF TERROR by Mr Biffo
LARA CROFT: THE FRAIL PSYCHOPATH by Mr Biffo
DIGITISER2000: STATE OF THE UNION by Mr Biffo
VIDEO GAMES: THEY'RE ALL BORING by Mr Biffo
HAVE PITY FOR THE GAMES CRITICS by Mr Biffo
FEMALE GAMES CHARACTERS: LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD? by Mr Biffo
GAMES JOURNALISM: WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE? by Mr Biffo

THE GAMES OF MY YEARS
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: ATARI - PART ONE by Mr Biffo
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: ATARI - PART TWO by Mr Biffo
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: THE ZX SPECTRUM PART ONE by Mr Biffo
THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: THE ZX SPECTRUM PART TWO by Mr Biffo

REVIEWS
REVIEW: RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER (Xbox One)
REVIEW: STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT (PS4, Xbox One, PC - PS4 version tested)

STUPID STUFF
21 TERRIBLE THINGS THAT HAPPENED WHILE PEOPLE WERE PASSED OUT
OMG! LET'S SELL SOME SECOND-HAND GAMES!
LET'S GET A JOB AT NINTENDO!
10 WAYS TO KILL BUBSY THE BOBCAT USING ELECTRICITY
MOVIE MAGIC: 10 BEHIND-THE-SCENES SECRETS OF STAR WARS
OMG! IT'S TIME TO QUEUE UP FOR BLACK FRIDAY!
16 PEOPLE WHO MADE THE INVISIBLE MEN VERY HAPPY

THE PREVIOUS ROUND-UP

PAY ATTENTION! Digi2000 can only keep going with your help. We're a tiny team of 1.5 people, doing this in lieu of other things we should probably be earning money doing. If you're enjoying yourself on here, and would like to show your support - please feel obliged to visit our Patreon page, or donate via the PayPal button on the sidebar. It really helps. Thank you in advance.

Everyone who donates $2 or more a month will get an e-copy of the UPDATED edition of The Man's Daddy's Book of Comedy Jokes, sometime before Christmas.

Failing that - you can also help smear the word of Digi2000 around the world. We think there's some great stuff on here, and if you agree, well... you can support Digi by getting some of the above to a wider audience. Thank you and love you!

2 Comments

THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: THE ZX SPECTRUM PART TWO by Mr Biffo

26/11/2015

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Given the ease with which it was possible to pirate computer games back in the 80s, it's little wonder that consoles replaced the home computer scene.

However, I was, and still am, a technophobe. I never copied a game for anyone else - that seemed like an excessive level of faff - but I certainly found myself giving tapes to classmates so they could copy games.

Everyone else was doing it... why shouldn't I? But somehow, having pirated games devalued them for me.

I had a C180 a friend had given me, which contained dozens of games - The Hobbit, Deus Ex Machina, Pimania and others - and none of them gave me the same buzz as buying a game, or receiving one as a gift, in the original packaging. It stripped them of some of their magic.

A game was a complete package which included the instructions and the box artwork, and if I wasn't getting them in the form that the creators intended I felt I was missing out.

I'm the same now. I never got into the whole Napster and torrent business - and I struggle to enjoy new music, in this streamable ecosystem, as much as I did when unwrapping a new CD, or vinyl album. The ZX Spectrum games that I loved were all ones that I owned, legitimately.

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THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: THE ZX SPECTRUM PART ONE by Mr Biffo

25/11/2015

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I was among the last of my friends to get a proper next-gen games machine.

Or, rather, an 8-bit "home computer" as they were known back then, in a bid to fool parents into buying one for their kids (let's face it, that hollow promise that we'd all be doing our homework on our computers wouldn't come to pass for another 30 years).

My best friend Stuart had a ZX-81; I remember him thumbing through the instruction manual trying to find out how to get "Space Invaders" to appear on it (he never managed to, no matter how often he typed the words "SPACE INVADERS" into the keyboard, or how hard he kicked it against the wall).

My other best mate Jon had an Oric-1. He owned two games: Ocean's Hunchback, and a flight simulator, that - if you flew sufficiently high - stranded you in outer space. It took around four or five hours of gaining altitude just to see the screen turn black, and be treated to a few blocky stars and planets. Well worth it. We took whatever entertainment we could get in those days.

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OMG! IT'S TIME TO QUEUE UP FOR BLACK FRIDAY!

25/11/2015

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You can't contain your excitement! This coming Friday is Black Friday - the Blackest Friday of all the Fridays.

It's the one day of the year when people around the world temporarily forget about all the bombs and slaughter and stuff that's happening, and head out to the shops to pick up some of those sweet bargains.

You don't want to miss out on your chance of fighting the crowds to grab a mildly discounted item, but if you want to stand a chance of picking up the sweetest bargains you'd better get down to your favourite shop fast. Hurry now!

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FEMALE GAMES CHARACTERS: LEVELLING THE PLAYING FIELD? by Mr Biffo

24/11/2015

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For a long time, gaming was considered a male pursuit, but things aren't just changing on that front; they've changed.

According to a Pew Research Centre report into American tech ownership, 42% of female respondents owned a games console, compared to just 37% who identified as male.

It's a slightly different picture according the Electronic Software Association, which found that 59% of males it polled identified as "gamers", against 41% of women.

Either way you look at it, there's a narrow gap there, and being a gamer is no longer just a thing that only boys do (if it ever was).

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16 PEOPLE WHO MADE THE INVISIBLE MEN VERY HAPPY

24/11/2015

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The Invisible Men. They see everything. They know everything. And unless we keep them happy, they threaten to reveal our secrets.

There is little more to add to this introduction than to say it prefaces the following: a gallery of 16 people who would gladly debase themselves to keep their secrets safe.

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THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: ATARI - PART TWO by Mr Biffo

23/11/2015

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I'd been a ZX Spectrum boy throughout most of the 80s.

The majority of my mates owned a Commodore 64 or BBC Model B, and I'd looked enviously at their systems - the beautiful, brown, flicker-free, graphics of the C64, and the crisp, arcade-like perfection of the BBC's version of Defender.

I took refuge in the fact that we had Ultimate Play The Game and Skool Daze fighting our corner, but I couldn't deny that at times the grass definitely appeared greener on the other side. Or browner anyway.

When it come to thrusting a foot in the 16-bit waters, I don't know why I chose to have it bitten off by the Atari ST rather than the more powerful, more popular, Amiga. With hindsight, I suspect it had something to do with being unable to imagine owning a Commodore-branded system.

Given that Sinclair had by this time been swallowed by Amstrad, and weren't part of this new generation, my loyalties skipped over Sinclair, back to Atari.

And so it was that I asked for an Atari ST for Christmas 1987. My parents could only afford half of it, however. Fortunately, I'd just dropped out of college, and had a job working for Ladbrokes as a graphic designer, so was able to pay for the other half.

And it was worth every half a penny.

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GAMES JOURNALISM: WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE? by Mr Biffo

23/11/2015

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Last week you may have noticed yet another storm brewing around games journalism. In a pair of articles on Kotaku, one by US editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo and another by UK editor Keza MacDonald, the site went public over its frustrations in dealing with Bethesda and Ubisoft.

In short: Kotaku feel it has, for a number of years, been blacklisted by Bethesda, and for the past year by Ubisoft, after leaking details of unannounced games. With calls and emails not being responded to, Kotaku's coverage of the companies' games has been - as you'd expect - compromised.

With Kotaku being one of the biggest gaming sites on the Interwebble, it kicked off a flurry of discussion. Much of it, inevitably, criticising Kotaku for being a bunch of crybabies, and inexplicably taking the side of the big games companies. Others were more sympathetic to Kotaku's journalistic right to report what it felt its readers would be interested in.

Question: Which of these "gourds" holds the most "water"?

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THE GAMES OF MY YEARS: ATARI - PART ONE by Mr Biffo

20/11/2015

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This is the first part of a new ongoing feature.

I don’t remember the first video game I ever played.

I have a vague recollection of my sisters owning a black-and-white, plug-into-your-telly console.

It was one of the ones with a load of different built-in games, all of which were Pong. Or, at least, Pong in all but name... Which seemed appropriate given that Nolan Bushnell's Pong was itself a rip-off of a 1972 game by Ralph Baer.

Table Tennis was part of the Magnavox's Odyssey system, who went on to win a court case against Atari - a case that hinged around Bushnell making the mistake of signing the guestbook at a demo showing of their ground-breaking machine. Unfortunately, the one-time licensing fee that Atari was forced to pay to Magnavox was small change next to the millions the company made from Pong.

I was never allowed to touch my sisters' game, though, and I actually don't ever remember my sisters - who are 8 and 10 years older than me - playing it either. What's more, I've never witnessed them playing a video game in the years since.

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MOVIE MAGIC: 10 BEHIND-THE-SCENES SECRETS OF STAR WARS

20/11/2015

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Star Wars Battlefront is the Star Wars game many have been waiting for. It transports players into that galaxy far, far away, for a truly pungent Star Wars experience.

But as we cartwheel towards The Force Awakens, we ponder this: just how did George Lucas and the non-literal wizards at his special effects powerhouse, Industrial Light and Magic, create the original Star Wars Trilogy? Here are some glimpses into the incredible work.

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REVIEW: STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT (PS4, Xbox One, PC - PS4 version tested)

20/11/2015

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It's all about those sounds, the reviews have told us. That's how you make a Star Wars thing truly authentic; get the sounds right.

First you need to get that authentic Star Wars theme song. You know: the one that starts with a hypnotic drum beat, and a quavering, high-pitched vocalist singing the words: "It's time to go to Star Wars!/La-di-dah-di-dah/Boc!".

Then you have to make sure you've got all the other noises right: the weird popping sound Han Solo's knees make, the constant thrum that comes from within Princess Leia's head, and the soft metallic cough which the space robot R2-D2 emits whenever he sees some sild.

Shame, then, that Star Wars Battlefront hired someone who'd never even heard of, let alone seen, Star Wars to voice its version of Darth Vader... "You do not know something something about The Dark Side" he says, like his balls are about to drop...

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LET'S GET A JOB AT NINTENDO!

19/11/2015

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You've always wanted to be a top video game designer, so imagine your excitement the day you open your local paper to see a listing in the jobs section for a game designer at Nintendo!

Without further ado or fannying around, you put on your plimsolls, and catch the trolleybus to Kyoto, city of opportunity, where Nintendo has its headquarters!

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